


Bubble of Peace

by chronologicalimplosion



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-06-26
Packaged: 2017-11-08 14:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronologicalimplosion/pseuds/chronologicalimplosion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They didn't go looking for each other—in fact, both were making something of an effort to avoid each other—but they were bound to run into each other eventually.</p>
<p>Tavros and Vriska meet in a Dream Bubble and so, so, so many things left unsaid are finally anything but. (Written before Act 6 and their actual next meeting.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bubble of Peace

**Author's Note:**

> This was written a lot time ago, and it's just been sitting in my in-progress fics folder for a while now, completely finished. So I thought I'd post it. Tavros and Vriska meeting in a dreambubble, written long before they actually did. Spoilers through Act 5, probably?

They didn't go looking for each other—in fact, both were making something of an effort to _avoid_ each other—but it was bound to happen eventually. To the backdrop of a not-entirely-inconsequential fight between Vriska and John (they were getting worse and worse, lately, as he got to know her and she already knew him and things happened far too differently for it to be the same) and Gamzee having just floated his way out of yet another dream bubble, it eventually did.

She was sulking in a memory of the spot where she found Mindfang's old stuff, and he found himself aimlessly wheeling his chair down a path a little different from the one he meant to take. Vriska saw him (or, rather, heard him, squeaky wheels and all) before he was even aware he'd crossed into another bubble.

“Why didn't you kill me?” She asked, not consciously allowing the words out but unable to even want to stop them.

There was a long pause, the dream bubble eerily silent in the way that only such a contrived environment can be. He wasn't frozen, wasn't torn between options, but he was still. “Why did you kill me?” he asked quietly after a while, then arising from his chair to step towards his tormentor (he was only wheelchair-bound when he was feeling bad about himself, and the desire to be at least a little more invulnerable around a predator like Vriska overrode that). The heap of metal dissipated into the very air behind him, forgotten.

Vriska, who had been cool and distant and only quietly upset (as with Aradia, death made her just a little bit more 0k8y about things), suddenly clenched her fists tightly and began to scowl dissatisfiedly at the circumstances she found herself in. Her mind filled in the brittle crunch and near-explosion of a breaking magic eight ball, but she only felt the lack of it more sharply. “All I wanted was to make you better. Stronger. That's all I've ever wanted, you sniveling, cowering... pitiful wreck.” And with that admission, the tension left her again. She was strangely limp, almost vulnerable. Anything but vulnerable, of course, because Tavros had known her too long to put those two words in the same sentence. But... but it was awfully close.

“Sometimes I went too far, I guess. But that's how I am, and I'm not about to apologize for that. I see things through to the end. And that's what I wanted for you, because... because you could be _so much_ and you don't even realize it.

“And I thought that, maybe, finally, you were making progress. You were adventuring with me, and I got you to stop sleeping all the time. You were _facing things_ and... and I thought... I guess it was pretty dumb of me to think anything like that. At the end of the day, you're just a damn cripple who can't even kill a girl he should want the worst kind of revenge against, even if she's not really going to die. Even if she's literally begging for it.”

Vriska seethed quietly for a while, returning very much to the mood she was in before he'd intruded, only not as easy to contain. Tavros was torn between taking a half-step forward or a half-step back, feeling his legs turn to metal and lock up. He was about eighty percent sure he was going to be punched. It would be eighty-eight, but he always tried to be a bit hopeful, at the end of the day.

“You made me suffer, and not even out of hate. I suffered because of your weakness, and then I was reborn a god. Then you come along, shaky on your new legs and all blustered, convinced you're going to kill me, and... and _you still can't_. I tried to help, but you left me behind, refusing to learn time and time again. And, in the end, after you've learned _absolutely nothing_ , you have the nerve to come back and still think you can kill me.” The sigh she heaved was epic, drawn out for what surely had to be eight i's, and she finally looked straight at him when it was gone, not nearly as hateful as he'd expected but... disappointed. And, Tavros hated _himself_ for it, which was almost worse. She just looked like she was sick of him, like she poured her entire life into him and he didn't even have the decency to spit it back in her face. And it was nearly as likely to kill him as her hatred.

“I was just sick of it--” and her eyes say she still is “--and I thought, if nothing else could get through to you, then maybe death would.”

She offered up a chuckle from the very most starved, depraved part of her being, humorless and uncaring. “And, somehow, you rubbed off on me more than I rubbed off on you. John called it remorse, I called it weakness, but one way or another, it has no place with a troll like me. I tripped up in the end, let Terezi take me out while my back was turned. Which was dumb, but it all comes back to the fact that  _I died feeling bad about killing_ . And  _you_ , of all trolls. I think I deserve an explanation. If you even have one.”

Tavros nearly just said “I don't”, but he stopped himself. He couldn't keep running from this. So, in one of the bravest moves he'd ever made, he crossed the distance between himself and Vriska to sit down beside her, both of them dead and neither of them done, as something almost sort of like equals. Not that he would ever, ever,  _ever_ voice such a thought to her.

“I... I don't hate you, Vriska. I... I used to not know if I had it in me to hate someone, if I couldn't hate you, but... but I don't think that's it. Because I... uh... think I hate some of the humans... just a little. And... and I think I... I might hate myself... sometimes.”

“Been spending too much time with Karkat,” Vriska immediately interjected, smiling like she was trying to be her old self again but her face wouldn't put up with the configuration.

Tavros plowed on anyway. “I... think it's just you. I think that you've been stuck in... uh... a really shitty place in the hemospectrum, with your lusus needing feeding and all. And, also, that you've just... uh... made a bunch of bad decisions. That you don't know when to stop and... and I think I always knew it was... going to get you into... uh... trouble, some day. I... I think... that, even though I... I never could have handled it, I... I always wanted to be your moirail a little.”

“Did you ever think that I was _trying_ to be your moirail? That everything I did was because I pitied you _so much it hurt_ , and that I wanted you to be stronger?” Beat. “Did you ever think that I was asking for a mercy-killing? That it was something I wanted out of your pity, not out of your hate? I had to kill my lusus when she was suffering, and all I wanted was to be given the same dignity.”

Tavros could just cower away. He could leave. He could just let her win, or give dumb excuses. It wasn't like she could do anything to him anymore. It wasn't like anyone could do anything to him anymore. But he knew what he had to do: he was going to tell Vriska she was wrong. Confident people did that all the time, and Jade was probably right. It was about time he stopped calling himself confident and time he started acting like it instead.

“I... I am sorry about what happened to your lusus. Even if... even if she wasn't very nice. But... but that was just what happened to you. From... from my side, I... I just couldn't stop thinking of... of when I was at the bottom of that cliff, and... and how a lot of trolls would've killed me and called it pity. I... I kind of even, for a while, thought it would be, uh, better, if I just... died. But... but I'm glad I didn't.”

She didn't cut him off, for some reason, and he didn't turn to look at her yet, sure that he probably couldn't face her yet. “So... um... actually, I, uh... I'm more sorry that I didn't try to help you, and that, uh... I guess I'm sorry I tried to kill you later. At... the wrong time. Or... something.”

“Hoofbeast excrement,” Vriska announced as soon as Tavros was done apologizing, the tiniest bit less grouchy but still anything but kind. “If you wanted to help me, the only thing to do was kill me. The only way to heal me, to make the pain go away, to push the reset button was to kill me. If that really is the best reason you have, you're either an idiot or more cruel than I gave you credit for.”

Tavros took a deep, shaking breath, studiously not looking at Vriska. “I was... afraid that I would do something wrong. Again. I didn't want you to die, and it to be my fault, not just because I didn't do it right, but because, well... because I  _killed_ you, too. I... I was sure that I messed up somewhere, somehow. Because... because that's all I've ever done, and...”

Vriska opened her mouth to cut him off with something about doubting her “am8zing luck”, but when she actually turned to look at him, he looked up on a fluke. Their eyes met and her words shriveled up and died before they ever made it past her fangs. “I survived.”  _For a while_ , the words go unspoken, implied, but her almost-comforting assurance is enough to keep it from mattering for a couple of seconds. No matter how many regrettable, stupid, reckless things Vriska did and how many things she scared Tavros into, no matter how many things he chickened out of or only ever did halfway, she survived that particular encounter. And, in the end, the rest of the gang was probably better off without the two extremes, anyway.

So long as they're so close, she bonks their foreheads together, like a facepalm or a frustrated introduction of wall and head. “Gog, we're a mess.”

“Pretty, uh, pitiful, huh?”

Vriska just hums her agreement, more tired than she would ever, ever let on, and more relaxed than she would let herself be if she were to realize it.

“You know... I think that, maybe, we've been... going about this... the wrong way.” Tavros took a deep breath, though the realization that he was breathing in the air Vriska had just breathed out only made him more nervous. “I think that... maybe... we both pity each other too much... to be... good moirails. And, uh... I think that... it would be better... if... instead of trying to help each other... badly... maybe... uh...”

Vriska was, at this point, hyper-alert of the troll whose blushing forehead she was leaned against. He wasn't aware of her shift in mood, thanks to the way his own eyes were clamped shut. “Spit it out,” she hissed, though it was without her usual venom.

“I think... we'd be better as matesprits.”

The silence he was met with coaxed one eye tentatively open. She looked torn, but she'd already made up her mind. She just didn't want it to have been so easy.

“It must be John fucking Egbert rubbing off on me, but I think that's actually pretty sweet. Pathetic, and I'm pathetic for thinking so, but sweet.” It wasn't like her at all, but she could only remember the lack of reciprocation on LOMAT, so her lips didn't lock with his. Instead, her fingers found his hand and squeezed, a little bit too close to vulnerable and a little bit too close to begging, but she was dead and it was just Tavros. He knew exactly what she was capable of. Her eyes fell on their hands for a bit, then rose to look at him again, expectant.

“I...” he began, just like he always did, not willing to advance and not willing to abscond. Always trying to pick nonexistent option c's.

“Shut up. Talking is stupid.”

He gulped, but leaned in nonetheless, heart pounding wildly and coloring his cheeks the slightest nervous brown. Finally, at long last,  _he_ kissed  _her_ . She immediately took over, but  _he_ kissed  _her_ . He had grown up more than she'd realized, but he was still a pitiful little wriggler. And it was definitely his first kiss (and she was  _definitely_ enjoying it).


End file.
